


What You Do When the World Doesn't End

by izzyb



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyb/pseuds/izzyb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christine likes to make lists to calm her nerves. After Narada, they could all use some calming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Do When the World Doesn't End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for medie's prompt of "What you do when the world's not ending."

One week before the emergency alarms sounded at the academy starting a chain of events that ended with one planet eviscerated and another saved, Christine sat on the narrow bed in her dorm room and made a list on her padd. Lists had a tendency to calm her and she was feeling jittery about the midterm she had to take in the morning.

This one was titled: "What I want to do before I die." She had typed in "What I want to accomplish before I die," but then erased it when she realized that accomplishments were all well and good, but she wanted _experiences_. Thirty thoughtful minutes later, she had a list typed and saved and was drinking a glass of water and getting ready for bed, like any responsible student who wanted to pass her test the next day.

Nowhere on there did she write that she wanted to become head nurse through default; that she wanted to fuck the brand new-also-by-default CMO on the desk in his office because no one seemed to know what was going on or who the hell was even captain now and it was a way to forget, at least for a little while. Of course, she didn't know that half the medical officers and technicians would be wiped out in the first few minutes of the _Enterprise_'s maiden voyage. She didn't even know Leonard McCoy then, at least beyond their cursory interactions at the clinic. She also hadn't known that lists like this get thrown out the window when dealing with actual death—there are things you want, things you need way more when faced with no future.

A little over a week later, she wasn't thinking about all the damn "experiences" she had so wanted, she was thinking of the ones the dead would never have. And what do you do with that?

Make a new list, that's what. Something to do anyway in the face of canceled classes and exams and an eerily quiet campus. Before she started, she ruefully remembered that number one on her old list was "go into space."

She titled it "What You Do When the World Doesn't End (and you may have had something to do with the saving of it)."

1\. Call your mother. (She had too, almost immediately, and Christine was definitely not the type to call when she's in trouble. Lauren Chapel had cried and nagged at the same time, telling her that she needed to eat more because she'd looked too skinny on the vid broadcasted everywhere. "I've been busy," Christine said in response, but she dutifully ordered a sandwich from the replicator that evening and managed to choke down a few bites while scanning the headlines herself.)

2\. Kiss the hero of the hour. ("You're just stroking his ego more than he needs, Christine," Leonard had muttered after she'd kissed Jim on the forehead and he'd grinned up her, splitting his lip even worse. "He deserves it, just this once," she'd countered, noticing Leonard still wouldn't meet her eyes. _I was there too_, she wanted to say. _Stop pretending otherwise_.)

3\. Drink. (She had consumed more alcohol in their time off since Narada than she had in all her years at the academy. There were many nights that were just a rush of drinking and talking and comforting those left behind, reinforcing the friendships she'd forged in those few days on the ship together.)

4\. Study. (Classes and final exams may have been canceled, but Christine was determined to graduate on time—there was no way that ship was taking off without her because she didn't remember a common medical procedure.)

5\. Repeat #3 and #4 (She did so until she wanted to pass out in a haze of a wine-and-Andorian-anatomy-charts-induced coma.)

That's where McCoy found her, five days after the day the world didn't end. Somehow, he was able to break in her room (she suspects Jim helped) and wake her up from her sprawled position on the couch. She was able to sit up and be functional with his insistence in helping alleviate her hangover with a convenient hypospray. She wondered if he just kept a supply of necessary drugs with him at all times now, if that was his way of coping. As if some other emergency was going to pop up, another emergency signal sound, and he wanted to be ready.

"Leonard—what?" She sat up slowly and pushed her pile of padds and reference materials to the floor with a crash. "What are you doing here?"

"No one had heard from you in two days--not since the last night at Shiney's. I, that is we, were worried."

She smiled at the change. "How is everyone?" Christine asked softly.

"They're fine, everyone's fine. Well, as fine as you can be after the adrenaline crash." He stroked a hand down her hair absently and she couldn't help turning into the hand. "Listen, do you want to get out of here? I was thinking of taking a shuttle and—"

"Yes," she said, beyond caring about details by this point.

6\. Don't be alone. (The saying went that everyone dies alone, but Christine didn't believe that, didn't want to believe that. What would be the point of living, otherwise?)


End file.
